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Athlon XP 1900/2000 (1 Viewer)

Tim_Y_F

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Does anyone own a computer with these CPU chips? Can someone provide some feedback about the CPUs?

According to many magazines the Athlon outperforms the P4 but I don't really trust magazines. Rather,I trust personal feedback.

Has anyone done a personal comparison between the XP 1900 and the P4 2Ghz?

A friend has an Athlon 1.33Ghz and he said it was real slow and hes envying another guy who has a Pentium 4 1.4 Ghz which he claims is lightning fast.

I'm starting to doubt the Athlon can beat the Pentium 4 despite the hype.
 

Peter McDonald

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If your friend is running a 1.33Ghz Athlon, and it's slow, there's something wrong with his computer. Maybe too little RAM?

Peter
 

Brian E

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Anand has a nice look at the current higher end processors in his review of the new 2.2 P4 Northwind http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1574 . He looks at the P4 2.2, 2.0A, 2.0, XP 1900+, 2000+ among others. I have a 1800+, just got it the other day, and it's rock solid (The 1800 even beats the P4 2.0 in a lot of tests).
I can make any computer "slow". Just put a bunch of crap on there that loads on startup, etc.
Also what are you going to run on it? That may make a difference in the recommendations you get.
 

Chris

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We have seven 1800+ systems running, very fast, very solid performers.

Comparative to the Dell P4 1.9G, it is so much faster it's almost laughable. And at about 60% the cost.
 

Tim_Y_F

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Thx for the feedback

the person running the Athlon uses 256MB of DDR-RAM(double data rate RAM) and the person running the P4 uses 128MB of Rambus RD-RAM. So theres not much difference. Both Video cards used are pretty much the same (Geforce 2 GTS).

The Athlon seems to take forever to load--seen it myself

(more than a minute--didn't time it)

The P4 only takes around 30sec according to the guy and the person has used it for a couple of months now.

Possibly there is a whole bunch of crap on the Athlon that loads on startup, etc and slows it down. Theres around 8 programs running on the taskbar, but that might be the same for the P4. It seems to me most of the ppl I know use Athlons and those Athlons need around 1 min to start up. I admit I haven't seen a P4 perform before. P3's/Athlons are common, but P4's are rare.

I'd probably buy a Athlon XP 2000---wise choice?

note: Upgrading from a 4 year old solid Pentium 233Mhz MMX
 

Hugh M

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with the Rambus RAM there are certain applications that can be faster, and certain ones which will be slower.

It looks to me like Intel is going with DDR now anyways.

as for bootup times I use a 1.4 Tbird on XP, with alot of equipment attached, and my boot times are very quick.

CPU speed doesn't determine the overall speed of the computer as you know. Hard drives, reg tweaks, OS, devices, (NIC Cards?), etc all have factors on bootup, as well as overall performance speeds.

If the Intel's can come near the price of the AMD they will be an attracvtive buy because the motherboards are better (in my opinion)....But if the AMD motherboards increase their stability and reilability then there will be no contest.

Also, the P4's have a lousy reputation, as a chip release in general. That is one of the reasons why they are so rare.
 

Dennis Reno

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Tim - as said previously, it is important to consider what is being loaded at startup. After your friend's computer boots, do a CTRL-ALT-DEL to see what is running. Also, startup time can be greatly increased if you have a virus protection program set to "scan on startup." My old computer would take nearly 5 minutes to boot. As soon as I disabled the startup setting in Norton startup time reduced by 75%.
 

Samuel Des

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I have a bunch of crap that loads on startup, but I can't tell which ones I can remove, and which ones I have to keep. I haven't got the list with me here. Is there an application that will help me control this?
 

Parker Clack

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I am running an AMD Athalon 1.2G and it takes about 10 seconds from the time I turn on the computer to when it is fully loaded.

Parker
 

Bob Hill

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You might really want to take a bit more time and consider a whole system not just the processor. Things you might not of looked at are storage access speed and buss speed. The Athlons support 266MHz Front side buss which is a huge improvement over say a 100 or 133MHz FSB. As to personal experience, lately I have only been building Athlon based systems, about 15 or so, and all have performed without a hitch for a variety of applications from hardcore gaming to music recording.
 

Hugh M

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go to RUN and type MSCONFIG then you should be able to go to startup and check off some of them.

as far as determining what they are, you can check under the paths of the files to get an idea of what programs they deal with.
 

Camp

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The Athlon seems to take forever to load--seen it myself
In addition to "crap" at start-up this has a lot to do with the motherboard and bios settings. It has virtually nothing to do with the speed of the CPU.

I don't think it really matters which you choose. The Athlon XP and Pentium 4 will both serve you very well. If you're building the PC yourself you'll certainly want to go the AMD route as their CPUs have a huge cost advantage. If, however, you're buying a pre-built system that will be less of an issue.
 

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